Recent years has seen an abundance of research and development relating to image display devices that are provided with a plurality of flat panels, of which liquid crystal panels are representative, and that join together and display the images formed by each of the flat panels. In this type of image display device, non-display portions that are incapable of image display, such as the frame portion or portions on which drive circuits are mounted, are typically present on the ends of the flat panels. Due to the existence of these non-display portions, a display screen that is formed by simply lining up a plurality of flat panels will be divided by the non-display portions between the flat panels, resulting in the drawback of a loss of continuity of images in the planar direction of the screen.
In response, an image display device capable of maintaining the continuity of an image in the planar direction of a display screen has been proposed. FIG. 1A shows the configuration of an image display device disclosed in JP-A-2001-147486 (hereinbelow referred to as “Patent Document 1”), and FIG. 1B shows the configuration of an image display device disclosed in JP-T-2004-524551 (hereinbelow referred to as “Patent Document 2”).
The image display device shown in FIG. 1A is composed of two liquid crystal displays (LCD) 101 juxtaposed on the same plane and two lens arrays 102 arranged on the display surface side of these LCD 101. Lens arrays 102 include a plurality of lenses provided for each picture element of LCD 101, and these lenses project the images of each picture element of LCD 101 onto screen 103. The image of each picture element that is cast onto screen 103 has overlapping portions 104 that overlap with adjacent picture elements. The formation of these overlapping portions 104 maintains continuity in the planar direction of the image projected onto screen 103.
In the image display device shown in FIG. 1B, coverplate assembly 111 is arranged above display region 112, and the formation of a lens body on the end portion of cover plate assembly 111 optically eliminates the image non-display portion (optically inactive region 113) of display region 112. Picture elements of the end portion close to the image non-display portion (optically inactive region 113) of display region 112 are designed such that the picture element pitch decreases with approach to the end in accordance with the refraction conditions of the lens body of cover plate assembly 111.
A three-dimensional display device that is currently receiving attention as a stereoscopic display device that employs flat panel displays such as liquid crystal panels realizes stereoscopic vision by spatially separating and presenting to the right eye and left eye a plurality of images having binocular parallax by means of lenticular lenses and a parallax barrier. This device has the advantage of not requiring the viewer to wear special glasses (refer to Okoshi Takanori, Three-Dimensional Imaging Techniques, Asakura Shoten).
One stereoscopic image generation method for raising the stereoscopic vision effect is a method of displaying by effecting perspective-projection conversion in a direction oblique to the axis of vision (refer to U.S. Pat. No. 6,389,236). FIG. 2 is an explanatory view for this stereoscopic image generation method.
In the stereoscopic image generation method shown in FIG. 2, images corresponding to each of right-eye viewpoint 121 and left-eye viewpoint 122 are subjected to perspective-projection conversion as right-eye perspective-projection converted image 123 and left-eye perspective-projection converted image 124 and projected onto image-display plane 125. At this time, right-eye perspective-projection converted image 123 and left-eye perspective-projection converted image 124 that are projected onto image-display plane 125 are assumed to be in a direction oblique to the axis of vision. When this method is used to effect stereoscopic display, stereoscopic image 126 is perceived by the viewer. At this time, the distance between the viewpoint of the viewer and each of the portions of the projected image of stereoscopic image 126 differs within image-display plane 125, and the viewer therefore loses awareness of the image-display plane, producing the effect of reducing the fatigue in binocular stereoscopic viewing. In addition, using this method widens the angle of view and therefore enables a further increase of the stereoscopic view effect and can provide stereoscopic imaging with a greater sense of realism.
Combining a plurality of image display elements at angles of from 90° to 180° between the elements enables the provision of a stereoscopic display device with still greater angle of view. Flat panel displays such as liquid crystal panels are used as the image display elements.